WHERE ARE THE SUPERHEROES?
A jubilant time, the era of the superhero,
that decade when a vital young President,
rejuvenated by a medical breakthrough,
laid down plans for a moonshot,
also carried out by dedicated scientists
and finally fulfilled years after his death.
Where are the superheroes now, when
a cruel and hateful old man
has banished the scientists
and replaced them with sycophants,
when the only jubilation is the nasty
crowing of spite and vengeance?
No superheroes now. Only us,
assorted groups of just-plain heroes
with a small “h”, filling the streets
and doing what we can.
TO A SPOTTED LANTERNFLY
You lie there on the deck—dead or alive? Unclear.
Your wings, with their distinctive pattern and cheeky
red spots, would be attractive if I didn’t know better.
But I do: you’re a tree-wrecker, yet another harbinger
of destruction, another painful reminder of life’s loss
of balance. Plus, beneath those flashy wings, you’re ugly,
like a white-spotted spider with a couple legs missing.
I find the eco-friendly bug spray, saturate you with it;
you hop away, insouciant. I spray you harder. Finally
you pause long enough that I can stomp on you, crush
the impertinent bug-life right out of you. I,
who gingerly scoop indoor spiders or wasps
into a plastic cup, hold stinkbugs loosely
in my palm before releasing them to the wild.
But you: you represent all that’s wrong
with the world these days.
I surprise myself with my own bloodlust.
MY CITY
(after David Beaudoin)
Wisps like fog, wraiths
of love, longing, grief
infuse the city of my youth,
waft to doors of places
once held dear, a map
where those years still live,
one layer among countless others
in a palimpsest of memory.
River laps at the waterfront,
bears it all away, except
for what we felt, who we
loved. Streetlights illuminate
only their small circle, leave
plenty of room for the dark.
Kay White Drew, a.k.a. Katherine White, M.D., is a retired neonatal physician. Her work appears in several anthologies including This Is What America Looks Like, Grace in Love, and America’s Future, and online journals including Gargoyle, The Intima, Pulse, New Verse News, and Loch Raven Review, where one of her essays was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her memoir of medical training in the 1970s, Stress Test, was published in 2024.
Featured image in this post is, “Spotted Lantern-fly on Tree Branch” by Stephen Ausmus for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, licensed via creative commons 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
